What is the most repeated movie title in cinema history?
Just as some people say not to judge a book by its cover (which isn’t always advice you should stick by), some film lovers might urge you to never judge a movie by its title. Yet, there are some movies out there that have genuinely awful or boring names, from Freddy Got Fingered to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which don’t exactly invite you to book tickets to see them.
Would you really want to go and see a movie that is so haphazardly titled as Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard? Do you want to have to tell someone who has asked what film you’re about to watch, “Ah, just going to see The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain“? It’s too much of a mouthful, and proves to be far too long to remember. We can bet that no one has ever referred to Borat by its full title: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
In some cases, a bad movie title hides a fantastic film, while some terrible movies mislead audiences into buying tickets simply because they have such unique titles. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman even blamed the commercial failure of The Shawshank Redemption on its title, which is instantly recognisable now, but upon its release, it reportedly confused many people who couldn’t remember the name of the film.
Sometimes, filmmakers will simply resort to something short and safe, summing up the theme of the movie in one word. The issue is that there are many movies out there with the same names, which, in many cases, affects its box-office performance. With many popular movie titles out there, it can be easy to resort to an obvious title, but it seems as though the perfect movie name strikes the balance between being creative and not too complicated.
So, which title has been repeated the most?
The Guinness World Records set out to find the most commonly-used film title of all time, and, excluding titles of classic novels and plays that have been adapted for the big screen, the most used name is Broken. If you Google ‘Broken film’, the first result you’ll get is 2012’s Broken, starring Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth. However, scroll a bit further down, and you’ll find Broken from 2006, which featured Jeremy Sisto and Heather Graham.
According to IMDb, there are 34 feature films all called Broken, however, head to Letterboxd and you’ll find dozens more, including short films, like Nine Inch Nails’ 1993 controversial 20-minute foray into the industrial music scene.
Besides Broken, another one of the most commonly used titles is Hero. The most popular movie called Hero was released in 2002 and was directed by Zhang Yimou. The martial arts movie is quite popular, but it is one of many films to share that name, like Stephen Frears’ 1992 comedy-drama, or Corey Yuen’s 1997 action film.
Finally, the title Mother has also been used a lot, around 30 times, to be precise. More recently, Darren Aronofsky made the controversial horror film Mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence, while Bong Joon-ho, Albert Brooks, Tatsushi Ōmori, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and many others have also used the name Mother.
